{according to our mailbox, it's definitely catalogue season}
I like to look at clothing catalogues
because photographed models
look so glad. "This sweater makes
me very happy," says a photo of a
man. "We're both wearing hopeful
skirts," says a snapshot of two women.
Some clothes appear without models
but seem animated: arms of shirts
and blouses assert themselves.
"We won't wait for bodies to take
us traveling," says the cloth. Noble
prose describes the products:
"Traditional cashmere in contemporary
styles. Imported." Retail catalogues
are a kind of comedy in which people
marry products in the end and prices
dance with prose. You see in a good
light what's for sale, gazing at
things you think might improve you.
hans ostrom 2011/2020
[a revised one from long ago]
A lake's a lovely dot
that should have ought
to have been if it weren't.
Lakeside, see the burnt
place inside stones:
campfire. The many zones
of any sort of lake
amaze: here fish wake,
there sleep. Shelves, shallows,
a glass surface where swallows,
evenings, select sweet bugs
to eat. Cool shade for slugs.
Shadows, where the muck
rules. A cove where a duck
feels safe and mutters.
Trees behave like shutters,
filtering light, allowing moss.
Humans can't help but toss
junk into lakes. I don't know why.
In the lake, see the sky.
Sit by the lake. My Lord, the sounds.
Even in small lakes life abounds,
from single-cell and bug to frog
to worms beneath a sunken log.
Fish jump, cruise, dive, and school.
Patient lakeside raccoons drool.
Kingfisher and eagle do espy,
and hawk with an awful eye
perceives a chipmunk by the lake.
(Back up that tree, for heaven's sake.
Made of snow or stream or spring,
a lovely, yes, a functional thing:
a blue acceptance, is a lake.
hans ostrom 2020
Reading/video of a short poem by the well known Irish poet and novelist (1904-1967). It's not about "the" gospel.
My great aunt, Bertha Åström, emigrated to the U.S. from Boden, Sweden (the far north) in the early 20th century. She had become pregnant out of wedlock when she was just 13-- statutory rape, at the very least. It was decided for her, I think, that she should emigrate and leave the child behind. Her eldest brother, Isak, my grandfather, had already come over, and he'd become a hard-rock gold miner, first at the Homestake Mine in the Dakotas, then in Colorado, and finally in Northern California--Grass Valley, Allegheny, and Sierra City. Bertha followed him for a while working as a cook and nanny, before settling in the Bay Area, where she became a nanny.
Eventually she married, and in the mid-1920s she and her husband built a resort in the Lakes Basin above Sierra City, specifically at Packer Lake. They and some laborers built a log-lodge and some log-cabins. Bertha cooked meals for the guests on a big wood stove. Many people of wealth liked to spend a week or two their in the summers, and they didn't mind roughing it a bit: it wasn't a Hilton.
By the way, her son Erik eventually made his way to America, and lived in Sierra City for the remainder of his life (and hers).
Before her life was totally disrupted, Bertha was training as a cook in a Boden hotel, and one of the recipes she brought over was for Swedish rye bread, which is quite different from Central European rye breads. It includes molasses, prunes, and anise seeds, and finely diced orange peels, mixed with dark rye flour, white flour, and a few mashed potatoes. My mother learned the recipe from Bertha and passed it along to other generations. It's a yeast bread which requires three risings, so it's an all-day task, pretty much. I adapted the recipe to a quick bread, and it captures the flavor and texture of the original pretty well. Sweet but not too sweet, aromatic, dense. Of course, there's nothing like yeast bread. The recipe:
Quick Swedish Rye Bread
This is a quick version of Bertha Åström’s
Swedish (Ostrom’s) yeast) rye bread. The consistency is slightly denser, but
the flavor is the same.
Ingredients:
2 cups white flour
2 cups dark rye flour
½ teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 cup low-fat buttermilk [if you don't have buttermilk, add white vinegar to milk]
½ cup molasses
½ cup prune juice
2-3 tablespoons of grated orange peel
1 tablespoon dried anise seeds
Directions:
Preheat oven to 400 degrees.
It’s best to sift the flour. Mix flour, salt, soda,
orange peel, and anise seeds well.
Mix prune juice and molasses and briefly warm the mixture
in a pan.
Add buttermilk and prune juice/molasses to the flour
(etc.) and mix. The dough will be quite sticky. Add more buttermilk if
necessary.
Briefly kneed the dough and shape it into a circular/oval
loaf on a floured surface. Cut an X into the top with a sharp knife.
Place on floured baking tin. Bake at 400 degrees for 30
minutes or slightly longer. Remove from oven and let loaf cool on rack.
Hans Ostrom 11/2019
[a revision of one I posted years ago]
The spreadsheet is all before you. The farther
left you travel, the more desirable things become.
Indeed the items named seem not just necessary
but inevitable, prophesied. As you travel toward
the reckoning right hand of calculation, acquisition
seems unlikely. You think of Zeno's Paradox.
You begin to feel an urge to save rubber-bands
and bits of string, to eat left-overs, sew
your own clothes, share your food with
people society discounts. When you finally arrive
in the severe, humorless zone of the numbers-column,
you then descend toward the hell of the Bottom Line,
which is, oddly enough, shown by two lines.
At that frontier, expenses devour entrails of income.
Accountants costumed in gray feathers perform
a ghastly arithmetical dance. You hear someone
mumble, "Nothing we can afford is worth doing,"
to which you respond, "Nothing worth doing
is quantifiable," which you don't believe.
You stand up and demand to know the origin
of money. You are forcibly subtracted
from the room. As you depart, you
hear someone say, "I think we just found
some extra money in the budget!"
A reading/video of a short poem by Seville-born poet Antonio Machado (1879-1939). Not sure who the translator is, but Machado's translator's include Willis Barnstone, Robert Bly, and Alan Trueblood.
Recorded this one a long time ago; in it, Auden thanks those who influenced his poetry:
Reading/video of a short poem by Mr. Wystan Hugh Auden in which he distinguishes between music and other arts. Poem is from his Collected Poems from Knopf.
We step off the Evolution Express
carrying a valise of neurons.
We are headed nowhere
and already there.
We live between our bones,
napping in hammocks of selfhood.
hans ostrom 1999/2020
